The Coolest! Ask them, they'll be sure to tell you
Pros
The insurance and benefits are 2nd to none. Mostly paid for by employer. The flexibility & work/life balance are also hard to beat. Some good people to work with. Impressive building and work spaces.
Cons
Location: If you live in CR or Waterloo/CF areas, the commute is at least 30 minutes out to Urbana. "The Codes": There is a list of codes that are recited to death by leadership. I feel most work places have similar things, but they are really taken to heart here. What do they even mean? I'm not sure anyone knows or can explain. But pretend to live by them, or be let go for not living up to them. The CEO prides himself on his values and morals. No swearing in the work place, and there was actually a meeting once about how there is to be no sarcasm inside the walls either (always a sign of someone with good humor). Oops, I was just sarcastic. They are correct when they say there have not been any layoffs over the last couple of years. That would be much nicer than what actually happens. Instead, once they realize they can't afford you anymore they just fire you on the spot and say you were not living up to the value codes, or it could be performance-based without a warning. Some really great people and hard workers have been let go just like this. The CULTure: From the first week you wonder if it's too good to be true. Everyone seems happy and truly honored to get the chance to work there. After awhile you start realizing people are almost robotic in their responses. A little while after that you get small snippets of real life reactions from people about how you need to behave that way or you'll be in trouble. As time goes on it's difficult to be yourself and have a real conversation with co-workers in fear you'll come off as negative. The word "Culture" is thrown around so much that you start noticing the word "Cult" and start drawing comparisons. My first real red flag was at my first company Christmas party. To their credit, no expense was spared. 2 nights in a hotel, free food, drinks and massages for you and your spouse. Then i walked into the ball room for the meeting, and every single person had to wear the same t-shirt. On the surface it doesn't seem outrageous, but...a bit cult like. And let's just say if the CEO ever came to work with a vat of kool-aid, there would be plenty there who would gladly drink it, no questions asked. More on that culture: At one point they had a team of 5-6 “talent enrichment/culture” employees who would be in charge of enforcing the award-winning culture. For some reason it was more important to keep them employed than people doing the actual work. The awards sound fine, but we’d get surveys to fill out literally every single month to try and win these awards. Better put a 10 on the surveys or you’ll get to have a meeting about what’s wrong. The amount of self back-patting was nauseating. We must be considered the coolest every year! At all costs! I’ve worked several places….it’s not better nor more special there. If you ask the employees, they’d be happy to tell you how amazing they are. They also believe the honor and difficulty of working there is right up there with NASA. I suppose assembling ratchet straps made in China and selling them online is right up there with a moon landing. Shoot, more sarcasm. Inflated titles: At one point in the marketing department, there were 20 employees and 5 of them were VP’s. There could be people in their young 20s with really nice titles to put on a resume. Directors, VPs, etc. doing essentially regular work that would be considered regular employees anywhere else. On that note, there is almost a sense of pride there about not needing an education to succeed. That’s fine if people succeed without it, but going to college can be beneficial for many reasons. Buzz Words/Cliches: If I had heard “we like to work hard and play hard” one more time… Another fun one is when your boss repeatedly asks you “how’s your bandwidth?” Are we computers? Just ask me how busy I am instead. The problems: I believe the CEO really deserves credit up to a point. He started this thing from his garage and grew it. The first to sell these specific trucking products online. I do also believe eventually this all went to his head. He began believing in the hype and thought he could sell anything online with the use of Google Advertising like he did for US Cargo control. Nevermind by then Amazon existed and all his competitors had also mastered the craft. Like many CEO’s, he started it at the right time. Ask anyone there and they’d have trouble explaining what it is Clickstop does now. Sort of a grab bag of startups that want to sell things online. Most are hit and miss and nothing has compared to the initial success of the original products of US Cargo Control. They have a pepper seed company, a healthy restaurant that provides carry-out If you want to drive to Urbana, and are even relying on the modern technology of laundromats to make the big bucks. Oh no, I can’t stop being sarcastic! The downfall: This inflated confidence led to the attempt at starting a digital agency within Clickstop. Look how we grew so fast! Let us do it for you too! The problem is there was no real plan to make this happen. They hired a huge team and invested millions into creating an agency without first securing an actual client. Then they failed to get the clients at all. A room full of talent with no actual work to do. That led to slowly, one by one, letting the new hires go. It’s baffling this was expected to work within a year or two. They even bought an actual printer/printing company for this endeavor. Now they have quietly let large numbers of employees go over the last 2 years, and are left reeling and trying to recover financially. This has been hidden well of course.
